So the Land Will Heal Again
by Wild-haggis
Summary: *Re-upload* Forced to write this at 1 am in the morning due to that damn movie/book. AU, Ennis' visit to jack's home.


And So The Land Will Heal Again

The door to Jack's room moaned as if in sympathy to Ennis. Jack's room was nearly bare; at a glance it appeared that nothing of the vibrant, energetic man Ennis had known existed in this Spartan cell.

Opening the window and perching on the bedside table Ennis could see all of the Twist's land. Land that he could have helped restore from the barren, deserted waste land it had become. It had lain too long without any love and tenderness. Now it appeared unlikely that anyone would be able to save and restore it.

Moving away from his seat and picking up the only prominent item linked to the Jack Ennis had known. The carved man riding the rodeo. Another failed dream. All of jack's life whatever he had reached out to grasp he seemed to only have manage to hold it fleetingly before inevitably managing to elude his grasp.

Blue. Jack's colour. Their jackets. Blood stained jackets bringing back remembrance of a happier and carefree time. Also symbolising the end of those days in as brutal and painful a fashion as would haunt them both throughout their lives.

Sounds of a truck pulling up outside and the front door banging open and closed brings Ennis out of his reverie for a moment. The moment soon lapses. Something claws at Ennis's insides at the idea that the rest of the world continues on unaffected, uncaring of its loss while Ennis is slowly being consumed by it. Loss of what was and what nearly could have been had he had the courage to just reach out for it.

But the rest of the world does continue on and drifts in through the window. Sounds of Jack's mother crying out in anguish force Ennis to finally wrench himself from the comforting security provided by an inanimate, lifeless object.

Proceeding down the stairs he finds the kitchen deserted.

Voices, raised so that they grate on his heightened nerves come clearly though to the kitchen from the outside.

Clutching the rolled up jackets tightly to him Ennis pushes the kitchen door open and steps out onto the porch.

Now he can see and hear acutely Jack's mother sobbing and moaning while clutching, with the same intensity Ennis' hold the jackets to him, a tall, slender man.

Ennis stops. Everything stops.

Raising his head from his mothers embrace the man looks up and meets Ennis' eyes. Eyes Ennis knows well. Eyes that have see him at his most happy and most vulnerable.

The man's face has deep bruises on it and a large gash across the right side. After a minute he moves ways from his mothers weeping and the man begins to move forward towards the house. Towards Ennis.

Ennis does not move. He cannot. If he moves this dreamlike tableau he finds himself in may end. And it cannot be allowed to end.

He moves stiffly and carefully towards Ennis. Wincing from injuries covered beneath his clothes. It is an arduous journey but eventually the man reaches to bottom of the steps. He waits.

Ennis moves. But just as slowly. He descends the steps carefully. The jackets still held tightly to him. Neither man breathes.

Ennis stand eye to eye with him. He reaches his left hand to the man's battered face. He hesitates again with his hand raised just inches from the man's face.

Then he reaches out to touch the warm soft cheek. Stroking it. Echoing a gesture once offered to him in comfort. Now he has the opportunity he had thought torn from his to return the gesture.

Ennis slowly brings his head down to rest on the man's shoulder and nuzzles into the neck. Taking in the man's smell. A smell that he had though was only left in an old, stained jacket.

The man's arms now come up around Ennis and wrap themselves tightly around him.

Ennis lets the jackets fall from his arms into the dust so that he can reach round and clasp the man in the same manner as he had done at a reunion almost two decades before.

His Jack had never abandoned him in the past and he wouldn't do in the present.

The Twist's land would get a chance heal again.


End file.
